Departmental News

Dutch Crossing: Journal of Low Countries Studies 38.1 (March 2013)

Publication date:
1 March 2014

At the beginning of this first issue of 2014 let me draw your attention to the forthcoming tenth biennial conference of the Association for Low Countries Studies, which under the theme of Discord and Consensus will be held at University College London and the (new) Dutch Centre in the (old) Dutch Church at Austin Friars in the City of London,1 in September 2014. All countries, regions, and institutions are ultimately built on a degree of consensus, on a collective commitment to a concept, belief, or value system. This consensus is continuously rephrased and reinvented through a narrative of cohesion and challenged by expressions of discontent and discord. The history of the Low Countries is characterized by both a striving for consensus and eruptions of discord both internally or through outside challenges. In the centenary year of World War I (1914), which the Netherlands was lucky to be spared but Belgium and Luxembourg had to endure heavily, two centuries (and a bit) after the Battle of Waterloo and the reunification of the Low Countries in the Kingdom of the United Netherlands (1813–14), and three centuries after the Peace of Utrecht (1713), we thought this to be an appropriate theme for an interdisciplinary conference which aims to explore consensus and discord in a Low Countries context along and across broad cultural, linguistic, and historical lines, and interpret the conference theme in the broadest possible sense.

Collecting: Knowledge in Motion exhibition in UCL Octagon Gallery

Publication date:
17 January 2014

Over the last six months, Stefanie van Gemert and Ulrich Tiedau from UCL Dutch worked together with Margot Finn and Kate Smith (History) and Claire Dwyer (Geography) to develop a new exhibition, Collecting: Knowledge in Motion. The display explores stasis and movement of objects in UCL’s collections. Knowledge in Motion will open on Wednesday, 22 January 2014, in UCL’s Octagon Gallery, and you are warmly invited to come and have a look.

Amsterdam Style City : Symposium at V&A Museum, 1 Feb 2014

Publication date:
12 January 2014

On 1st February 2014, it will be Amsterdam’s turn to feature as a ‘Style City’. This half-day symposium is part of a lecture series organised of the Victoria and Albert Museum. The afternoon consists of three separate presentations covering ‘Canals and Houses’, ‘Amsterdam Art and Artists’ and as well as the ‘The Representation of Amsterdam in Contemporary Film and Literature’.

Dutch Crossing: Journal of Low Countries Studies 37.3 (November 2013)

Publication date:
27 November 2013

At the beginning of this last issue before the cut-off date for the REF2014, the British Research Excellence Framework, a few words on the utility and futility of bibliometric indicators as quality measurements of scholarly publication. Regular readers will know that Dutch Crossing: Journal of Low Countries Studies since 2011 is indexed in all important citation and indexing services, including the ‘big two’, the Arts & Humanities Citation Index (AHCI), part of ISI Thomson-Reuters’s Web of Science, and Elsevier’s Scopus database, and has received and INT1-rating, the highest category, on the History list of the controversial European Reference Index for the Humanities (ERIH).

New Monograph by Jane Fenoulhet on Cees Nooteboom and his Writing

Publication date:
14 October 2013

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Cees Nooteboom (born 1933) is a writer of fiction, poetry and travel literature. Translated into at least thirty-four languages, his work raises important questions about the mobility of literary texts and invites a new theoretical approach, for to read Nooteboom straightforwardly as a Dutch author would be to do him an injustice.

London Low Countries History – Research Seminar Series 2013/14

Publication date:
12 September 2013

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Convenors: Anne Goldgar (KCL), Ben Kaplan (UCL), Ulrich Tiedau (UCL)

The Low Countries history research seminars meet on Friday afternoons in the Institute of Historical Research at 5:15 pm. Please note: due to refurbishment work at the IHR, seminars this year meet in alternative locations – see schedule – and 15 mins later than previously. SH Athlone = Senate House, Athlone Room, located in the South Block on the 1st floor, room 102. SH Bedford = Senate House, Bedford Room, South Block on the ground floor, room G37. STB 9 = Stewart House, adjacent to Senate House, at 32 Russell Square, room 9 in the basement.

Dutch Crossing: Journal of Low Countries Studies 37.1 (March 2013)

Publication date:
27 July 2013

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Let me begin this editorial column by announcing further changes in the editorial board of Dutch Crossing: Journal of Low Countries Studies. Anne-Marie Musschoot
(Ghent), one of our longest-standing editorial board members, decided
to stand down and we would like to extend our profound gratitude for her
longstanding support of the journal. Simultaneously we welcome Yves T’Sjoen, senior lecturer in modern Dutch literature and Afrikaans, also at Ghent, and Phil van Schalkwyk,
associate professor at Northwestern University (Potchefstroom), on the
editorial board. Their specialisms in textual scholarship, modern poetry
and prose of the Low Countries, and Afrikaans literature in South
Africa will complement and strengthen the existing expertise on the
editorial board and reflect our intention to widen the scope of Dutch
Crossing to include the distinct but closely related Afrikaans language
and literature, one of the rich and plentiful colours of the ‘rainbow
nation’ South Africa.

Beacon for Public Engagement Award for Dutch Walks in London

Publication date:
23 July 2013

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Ulrich Tiedau has been awarded a 2013 UCL Beacon for Public Engagement Award for a project that will develop and publish, in close dialogue with the historically interested public, a set of Dutch (and Flemish) walks through London, directed at an audience interested in Anglo-Dutch exchanges over the centuries. Each walk, or cycle-route, will be derived from and informed by research by members of the UCL Dutch department or the larger Low Countries Studies community in London and themed by either time period or subject. The walks will be created with a view to raising awareness of the manifold connections and exchanges between London and the Low Countries, and to engage with the wider public who will not only be able to follow the walks but also to contribute user-generated content.

Cultural historians, literary scholars, geographers and maritime practitioners from the Benelux-countries, France, Germany and the UK will come together for a symposium on port cities as places of cultural exchange in London on 29 and 30 May. The conference is jointly organised by UCL Belgium (Université Catholique de Louvain), UCL London and Senate House Library, University of London.

The School of European Languages, Culture and Society at UCL, in Partnership with Poet in the City, is delighted to present an important new series celebrating the very best of contemporary European poetry. The Contemporary European Poets series brings to London celebrated poets from Hungary, Holland, France, Germany, the Faroe Islands and Italy, for showcase events at Europe House. Events will include live readings by the poets, with all poems read both in the original language and in brand new specially commissioned English translations. On 30 May Ester Naomi Perquin will take part in a FREE event on Dutch poetry at Europe House.

What is experimental fiction? Masterclass with Lars Bernaerts (Brussels)

Dutch Crossing: Journal of Low Countries Studies 37.1 (March 2013)

Publication date:
6 March 2013

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A new year always provides an occasion for looking back and taking stock as well as for making plans for the future. After the first four annual volumes with Maney we can summarise that the 11 issues published between 2009 and 2012 (out of which three were guest-edited special issues) consisted of 58 journal articles by 60 contributors from 14 different countries, not including book reviews and editorial columns. The country ranking list, perhaps unsurprisingly, is headed by the Netherlands with 15 contributors, followed by the United States with 10, the United Kingdom with 8 and Belgium with 6 authors. On a higher level it can be said that just short of half of all contributions (28) came from the Anglophone world (apart from the US and UK, from Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland and South Africa), a third from inside the Low Countries (21), and the rest from other European countries like Germany, France, Italy, Poland and Israel (9). This reflects very well Dutch Crossing’s special focus on contacts and exchanges between the Anglophone and Dutch-speaking worlds through the centuries while also including other aspects of Low Countries Studies. In addition there were 15 book reviews, mainly from the UK, US and the Netherlands.

Certificate of Dutch as a Foreign Language (CNaVT) examinations 2013

Publication date:
5 March 2013

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The UCL Department of Dutch is organising the Certificaat Nederlands als Vreemde Taal (CNaVT) exams in April–May 2013. The CNaVT is the official, international exam of Dutch as a Foreign Language by the Nederlandse Taalunie (Dutch Language Union, the Dutch-Flemish-Surinamese equivalent to the British Council).

What is experimental fiction? Lars Bernaerts visiting scholar 2013

Publication date:
25 January 2013

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Concepts, Metaphors and the Case of the Postwar Neo-Avant-Garde in the Low Countries

Lars Bernaerts, Professor for Literary Theory at the Free University of Brussels, will be a visiting scholar at the UCL Department of Dutch in term II and III. His research focuses on experimental fiction and methods of textual analysis (classical and postclassical narratology, speech-act theory). His research project at UCL will focus on the Dutch and Flemish Neo-Avant-Garde of the 1960s and 1970s.

Talks on Dutch Art and Diversity at the Wallace Collection

Publication date:
8 January 2013

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Stefanie van Gemert, PhD Candidate in Comparative Literature and Teaching Assistant at the Dutch department, will be teaching three half-an-hour sessions at the Wallace Collection on Saturday, 12 January (11am, 1pm and 3pm).

Her talks will be on 'Dutch Golden Age Art and Diversity', with a specific focus on the history of the Dutch East India Company and its influence on material and cultural wealth in the Dutch Republic.Stefanie's talks are part of the Wallace Collection's 'Day in the Seventeenth Century', the final event of the HLF-sponsored community project 'Treasures from the East'. This project celebrated the refurbishment of the Wallace Collection's renowned East Galleries with Dutch art.

The events on Saturday are free (suggested donation £2) and promise to be entertaining for all age groups. There will be baroque music and dress performances; you can paint your own Delft Blue tiles and there are plenty of talks on Dutch art. Just walk in on the day and admire the newly-transformed East Galleries.

The Wallace Collection is one of the national museums, close to UCL (just off Oxford Street: Bond Street tube). The museum is free and has an outstanding collection of Dutch old master paintings by, for example, Rembrandt, Frans Hals and Pieter de Hooch.

Dutch-themed exhibition ‘Journeys East’ in UCL Main Library now open

Publication date:
14 December 2012

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Stefanie van Gemert, PhD candidate and Teaching Assistant in the department, curated an exhibition (with accompanying digital display) for UCL Special Collections. The exhibition Journeys East is now on view in the Main Library until Feb 2013, on the landing between the newly reopened Flaxman Gallery and the Donaldson Reading Room.

Dutch Crossing: Journal of Low Countries Studies 36.3 (November 2012)

Publication date:
7 December 2012

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It gives us pleasure to be able to report that Dutch Crossing: Journal of Low Countries Studies, after having been included in the ISI Thomson-Reuters Web of Science, arguably the most important set of citation indexes and bibliographic databases, for two years now, in July 2012 has had its first ‘Impact factor’ calculated. For those who are less familiar with, or skeptical about, ‘bibliometrical’ indicators, the impact factor of a journal in any given year is the average number of citations received per paper published in that journal during the two preceding years, and generally considered to be one of the most important metrics in research assessment.

High Impact Literature from the Low Countries Tour 14–19 January 2013

Publication date:
22 November 2012

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6 top writers from the Low Countries on tour to 6 cities for 6 nights of readings & debates to showcase the best high impact literature from Flanders & the Netherlands in English translation with a final gala gathering in London of authors from both the UK & the Low Countries

Wolfson Postgraduate Scholarships in the Humanities

Publication date:
5 October 2012

The
Wolfson Foundation seeks to support excellence. Drawing on its history
of support for higher education and interest in the humanities, the
Foundation is offering 3 postgraduate research awards in the humanities.
These will be for 3 areas in history, literature and languages.

London Low Countries History – Research Seminar Series 2012/13

Publication date:
16 September 2012

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Convenors: Anne Goldgar (KCL), Ben Kaplan (UCL), Ulrich Tiedau (UCL)

The Low Countries history research seminars meet on Friday afternoons in the Institute of Historical Research at 5:15 pm. Please note: due to ongoing refurbishment work at the IHR, seminars this year we will meet in alternative locations (SH Court = Senate House, Court Room, located in the South Block on the 1st floor; ST B2 = Stewart House, adjacent to Senate House, at 32 Russell Square, room 2 in the basement).

Poetry & Translation: Leonard Nolens and Paul Vincent (26 Sep 2012)

Dutch-English Literary Translation Workshop (10–13 September 2012)

Publication date:
14 September 2012

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The Dutch
Department at UCL recently hosted an extremely successful four-day intensive
workshop focusing on literary translation from Dutch into English. It enabled
undergraduate and graduate students as well as recent Dutch studies alumni from
four British universities to work together with an acclaimed Flemish writer and
three distinguished professional translators, while meeting also first-hand
with a literary editor and a representative from the British Centre for
Literary Translation.

Dutch Crossing: Journal of Low Countries Studies 36.2 (July 2012)

Publication date:
16 July 2012

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Regular readers will have noticed gradual changes in the editorial board of Dutch Crossing: Journal of Low Countries Studies over the past couple of issues. Partly necessitated by generational change we have started to restructure the board to give additional weight to the global aspects of Dutch Studies as reflected in Dutch Crossing and the manifold exchanges between the Dutch-speaking and Anglo-phone worlds in particular.

Public engagement workshop programme at the Wallace Collection

Publication date:
13 July 2012

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This summer Stefanie
van Gemert (Comparative Literature PhD student and Teaching Assistant at
the Dutch department) is running four workshops at the Wallace Collection and the UCL Art Museum on Dutch
seventeenth-century art and the history of the Dutch East India Company.

UCL Dutch aims to reward academic excellence among new students of its postgraduate programme by offering a study expense bursary for new students starting the MA in Dutch Studies in September 2012. The bursary covers up to £600 towards study expenses like books, research travel and other research related expenses.

Jacques Presser (1899–1970) between history and literature, 25 May 2012

Publication date:
11 May 2012

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When
Jacques Presser’s Ondergang (1965, in English: Ashes in the Wind : The
Destruction of Dutch Jewry, 1968) first appeared, twenty years after the
end of World War II, the book hit Dutch society like a bomb. What people knew
in general but had forgotten, passed over in silence or repressed during two
decades, was here described in every gruesome detail: the systematic
humiliation, isolation, despoliation, and extermination of Dutch Jewry.

Dutch Crossing: Journal of Low Countries Studies 36.1 (March 2012)

Publication date:
22 February 2012

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After
two special issues on new approaches in Netherlandic art history, for which we would
like to thank Christine P. Sellin from the American Association for
Netherlandic Studies (AANS) heartily for her meticulous guest-editing, this first
issue of Dutch Crossing in
2012 is a ‘regular’ issue without an over-coupling theme. This is not to say
that no connections could be made between the individual contributions, quite
on the contrary.

Double Dutch! A free Festival in Hyde Park (28 Feb 2012)

Anglo-Netherlands Society Annual Awards for students of Dutch

Publication date:
6 February 2012

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The Anglo-Netherlands Society has created these awards to recognize and reward outstanding work in the field of Dutch Studies at UK universities. The Society promotes the social, artistic, literary, educational, scientific and other non-political interests common to the UK and the Netherlands.

Impact in modern languages workshop at the IGRS (3 Feb 2012)

Publication date:
2 February 2012

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In the light of the important new element in REF2014 that is Impact, in the shape of the impact statement and impact case studies, the Institute for Germanic and Romance Studies (IGRS) is proposing a regular series of workshops for colleagues in Modern Languages to come together to discuss their ideas and strategies. All colleagues in Modern Languages are welcome to attend these events, and we would also appreciate further offers, from throughout the UK, of talks/case studies to discuss at future workshops.On this occasion we welcome the following, who will speak for 15 minutes in this order, followed by discussion:

2011 ACLS Early Careers Researcher Essay Prize for Dirk Schoenaers

Publication date:
2 February 2012

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Dirk Schoenaers, Research Associate at UCL French, has won the 2011 Prize in the early career researcher category with an article on ‘The Middle Dutch Translation of Froissart’s Chronicle (c. 1450): Historiography in the Vernacular and the Ruling Elite of Holland’.

Podium discussion with Abdelkader Benali and Hisham Matar (26 Jan)

Twitter hangout on 11 January: All about Dutch literature

Publication date:
6 January 2012

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Got a question on Dutch literature or just curious to know? On the 11th January members of the Dutch department will be holding an hour live hang out from 2–3pm on Twitter. Just follow Litro magazine (#litromagazine) on Twitter and get your questions answered and your curiosity satisfied.

Knowledge Transfer and Enterprise Champion for 2012 (OA/OER)

Publication date:
12 December 2011

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Ulrich Tiedau has been
appointed a UCL Knowledge Transfer and Enterprise Champion for 2012.
This part-time
appointment was made by the Office of the Vice-Provost (Enterprise) and is
financed by the Higher Education Innovation Fund.

Dutch Crossing: Journal of Low Countries Studies 35.3 (November 2011)

Publication date:
11 December 2011

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The November 2011 issue of Dutch Crossing: Journal of Low Countries Studies focuses on Crossing Boundaries and Transforming Identities: New Perspectives in Netherlandic Studies. Guest-edited by Christine Petra Sellin from the California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks, CA, it comprises of select art history papers from the fifteenth biennial Interdisciplinary Conference on Netherlandic Studies, held at UCLA in Los Angeles in June 2010.

Susan Stein's Play on Etty Hillesum at UCL on 21 November 2011, 6.30pm

Publication date:
2 November 2011

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Etty
is a touring one-woman theatrical play based on the diaries and letters
of Etty Hillesum, adapted and performed by Susan Stein. Directed by
Austin Pendleton. Using only Etty Hillesum’s words, Susan Stein’s
adaptation brings us to 1943 when Etty, a young Jewish woman, is about
to be deported out of Holland.